I didn't do it????????????
3 New Orleans police officers plead not guilty to hitting man
Lawyer: Victim was not drunk
By Paul Simao, Reuters | October 11, 2005
NEW ORLEANS -- Three New Orleans police officers pleaded not guilty yesterday to beating up a 64-year-old man and roughing up a journalist in another blow to a department already under fire for its performance in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Two officers, identified as Lance Schilling and Robert Evangelist, were charged with battery in connection with the arrest of Robert Davis on Saturday outside a bar in the French Quarter.
Officer S.M. Smith was accused of roughing up a producer for Associated Press Television News.
A video shot by APTN showed an officer punching Davis in the head several times as he apparently resisted and a group of officers subsequently dragging Davis to the ground.
The tape showed Davis being punched again and bleeding on the sidewalk. An officer identified as Smith then approached the APTN producer and ordered an end to the filming, jabbing him in the stomach when he presented media credentials.
Davis was arrested for public intoxication, resisting arrest, and other charges after the encounter. Schilling, Evangelist, and Smith were arrested Sunday and suspended without pay. They were released yesterday on bail.
Davis's lawyer, Joseph Bruno, told the Associated Press that his client was not drunk and put up no resistance as he was being struck.
''I don't think that when a person is getting beat up there's a whole lot of thought. It's survival. You don't have a whole lot of time to think when you're being pummeled," Bruno told AP.
Bruno told AP his client suffered fractures to his cheek and eye socket, and scrapes and bruises, but was expected to recover.